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ARK: Survival Evolved |OT| Early Access to the Land Before Time

AwesomeMeat

PossumMeat
Looks like a nice content update is coming along with some official contests.

51FDA5737A8B52C4FAFC939A5FCCF9E7C748BE65

http://steamcommunity.com/games/346110/announcements/detail/249168568957770835

I wonder if they strategically planned this release just before the opening of Jurassic World.

I guarantee it.
 

JambiBum

Member
They are adding monkeys soon. Must tame monkey and have it follow me everywhere I go. It also must stay away from Mirk.
 

Mirk

Member
They are adding monkeys soon. Must tame monkey and have it follow me everywhere I go. It also must stay away from Mirk.

Thats a good idea :( This dev is crazy with all the updates though. I have more ea games then released games on steam. I have yet to see any of them put out so many fixes and as much content as these guys and its only been a week!
 

MajorMane

Member
Every time I log off, one of my friends always manages to get at least one of our raptors killed... at least we positioned this base in a spot that conveniently has plenty of raptors in the area, so it should be easy enough to get new ones.

Sort of on that same subject, I'm thinking of creating some sort of barn enclosure to keep our dinosaurs away from harm. I've seen a few styles around on the server I'm playing on, but does anyone have any tips, tricks, building plans, etc.?
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
is a mega tribe ever logged out? I feel your more likely to get all your stuff destroyed over night in a small tribe.

You definitely are, that is why all the small tribes are merging. You either get assimilated or get annihilated.

And while a megatribe might never be completely logged out the island is pretty big, unless those last couple people are on permanent guard duty---i.e., turning a game into a job and bored out of their minds the base(s) can't be covered 24x7.

Remember that the mostly wood bases can be compromised in a matter of minutes. Metal is less vulnerable but the vulnerability is still there. Almost all of them have dino parks that are vulnerable to aerial assault. Typical base design anybody landing on the roof can use bows to kill any all dinos exposed and/or chop through the roof with metal tools.

Going to need to be some real work/thought put into modifying the current base vulnerability unless they really want each server to end up with a megatribe.

Every time I log off, one of my friends always manages to get at least one of our raptors killed... at least we positioned this base in a spot that conveniently has plenty of raptors in the area, so it should be easy enough to get new ones.

I'm a big fan of personal mounts. Tribe can have any number of shared "work" dinos but each tribemember should have his own exclusive ride that he can be reasonably confident will still be there when he logs in. I ended up kicking a tribemember last night who was unwilling to respect that policy. Personally I really like getting a raptor and then leveling up to god-tier. I don't want some inconsiderate asshole throwing all that work away because he is too lazy to get his own ride and/or too dumb to keep his from dying. Talk to the leader, always remove the saddle, put up a sign, whatever, so that your mount is not 1st on the list of "easiest thing to jump on in the dino park after foolishly losing my own mount.";

As far as barns the fence foundations are cheap and snap to other structures at a few different angles, making it easy to build fenced enclosures. Put one or more dino gates to get in and out, then build walls on top of the fence foundations high enough so that they're not vulnerable to any dipshit with a bow and you're good to go. Also remind everybody to set their pets to passive when in the park so you don't end up with one aggro pet triggering the entire pack. Lots of people think neutral/attack-my-target/aggressive pets lose in a fenced perimeter are a good defense but the reality is that pets are easily killed when nobody is driving them, picking targets, and greatly increasing their attack speed. Better off with them on passive or perhaps neutral to prevent accidents, they're not really a real defense, just an early warning system if you happen to have tribemembers in the base. Everybody in the tribe who is online is going to know when the first pet dies in any case.

Alternatively you can build dinogates into a normal building and put a roof over them too to fully protect them. Takes more materials for less space but is much more secure. You can't get some of the bigger dinos through the first dinogate, though. Stegos don't fit, for example.

I've even knocked out a couple walls and driven my raptor right inside the living area and then walled it back up just to be sure a couple times.
 

MajorMane

Member
I'm a big fan of personal mounts. Tribe can have any number of shared "work" dinos but each tribemember should have his own exclusive ride that he can be reasonably confident will still be there when he logs in. I ended up kicking a tribemember last night who was unwilling to respect that policy. Personally I really like getting a raptor and then leveling up to god-tier. I don't want some inconsiderate asshole throwing all that work away because he is too lazy to get his own ride and/or too dumb to keep his from dying. Talk to the leader, always remove the saddle, put up a sign, whatever, so that your mount is not 1st on the list of "easiest thing to jump on in the dino park after foolishly losing my own mount.";

As far as barns the fence foundations are cheap and snap to other structures at a few different angles, making it easy to build fenced enclosures. Put one or more dino gates to get in and out, then build walls on top of the fence foundations high enough so that they're not vulnerable to any dipshit with a bow and you're good to go. Also remind everybody to set their pets to passive when in the park so you don't end up with one aggro pet triggering the entire pack. Lots of people think neutral/attack-my-target/aggressive pets lose in a fenced perimeter are a good defense but the reality is that pets are easily killed when nobody is driving them, picking targets, and greatly increasing their attack speed. Better off with them on passive or perhaps neutral to prevent accidents, they're not really a real defense, just an early warning system if you happen to have tribemembers in the base. Everybody in the tribe who is online is going to know when the first pet dies in any case.

Alternatively you can build dinogates into a normal building and put a roof over them too to fully protect them. Takes more materials for less space but is much more secure. You can't get some of the bigger dinos through the first dinogate, though. Stegos don't fit, for example.

I've even knocked out a couple walls and driven my raptor right inside the living area and then walled it back up just to be sure a couple times.

Yeah, I think we're going to have to have a conversation about it. I was miffed because they were only supposed to use the raptors to get themselves a raptor mount, but they went and were doing other stuff that got the raptors killed. So, next raptor I get will definitely be a "DO NOT TOUCH" one. I also had a raptor seemingly disappear while I logged off before, most likely due to her glitching out of our fenced in area. I love the raptors, but there's a large amount of care that goes into them.

Can the dinogates be placed on top of wooden foundations? I was thinking of maybe laying down a floor, put the gate (one or two) on the foundation, and build up the walls high up with a ceiling on top. Might be a little over the top, but it would protect from most griefers, even those with flying dinos. The other problem I have is that I'm not entirely sure how wide the dinogate is with the frame.
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
Can the dinogates be placed on top of wooden foundations? I was thinking of maybe laying down a floor, put the gate (one or two) on the foundation, and build up the walls high up with a ceiling on top. Might be a little over the top, but it would protect from most griefers, even those with flying dinos. The other problem I have is that I'm not entirely sure how wide the dinogate is with the frame.

I've never tried it on top of a foundation. I wouldn't be surprised if it worked. The gate is visibly a bit wider than 2 foundations but I found that if you lay down a row of 4 foundations, then remove the middle 2 you can put the gate where they were and the sides will visibly overlap the foundation on each side but will not block the placement of walls. The only tricky part is getting it absolutely in the same line with the foundations on either side so it looks just right. The other thing I noticed was that I couldn't roof right up to the top of it, might have to go a wall higher and then put in a ceiling.
 

Xyber

Member
15-20 fps on 1600*900 mid with R9 280 & I5-3330.Any help/tips?

Launch with the no sky mode that was recently added, that gives a nice boost. Heard it was a little glitchy at night (sky looked weird or something), but might be worth putting up with for now.

I'm guessing you already have, but put everything but textures and AA on low, disable all extra effects like ambient occlusion and motion blur. Then you can lower resolution scaling a bit, how much is really up to you. If you can take a very low res image right now, it's possible to get okay framerates.

Another thing you can do is to open the console (Tab if you haven't changed it) and type r.shadowquality 0. This can give you another 5-10FPS, but removes all shadows and makes it look super flat.
 
Launch with the no sky mode that was recently added, that gives a nice boost. Heard it was a little glitchy at night (sky looked weird or something), but might be worth putting up with for now.

I'm guessing you already have, but put everything but textures and AA on low, disable all extra effects like ambient occlusion and motion blur. Then you can lower resolution scaling a bit, how much is really up to you. If you can take a very low res image right now, it's possible to get okay framerates.

Another thing you can do is to open the console (Tab if you haven't changed it) and type r.shadowquality 0. This can give you another 5-10FPS, but removes all shadows and makes it look super flat.

tried with those.shadow quality helped a bit, but still dips everywhere.going 35 to 14 the moment i run to forest area.skybox thing didnt help that much though.
 
Sorry if I'm being ignorant but it seems a bit irresponsible to have so few official servers that they are constantly over populated. What's holding them back? Just time? Or are they anticipating a large player drop once it's no longer survival game of the month (though it's really special)
 
So I just joined the gaf server and got attacked by dilo as soon as I clicked spawn ran away and found 2 scorpions I have never seen that were dead, then I ran up a cliff and was too scared to ask the people on if I could join their fun so I disconnected. Yay social Issues.

also is everyone experiencing laggy dino's whenever they are attacked?
 

JambiBum

Member
Sorry if I'm being ignorant but it seems a bit irresponsible to have so few official servers that they are constantly over populated. What's holding them back? Just time? Or are they anticipating a large player drop once it's no longer survival game of the month (though it's really special)

They have a lot of servers already and they are constantly adding more. The biggest issue they have right now is that they didn't have any european/oceanic servers at first so everyone had to play on the same servers but they are adding more and more servers for those regions constantly so it should even out.
 

Mirk

Member
So I just joined the gaf server and got attacked by dilo as soon as I clicked spawn ran away and found 2 scorpions I have never seen that were dead, then I ran up a cliff and was too scared to ask the people on if I could join their fun so I disconnected. Yay social Issues.

also is everyone experiencing laggy dino's whenever they are attacked?

Don't be shy you can join us if you want. If you see jambi, lewtt or myself on just ask! xD
 

N-Forced

Neo Member
Can someone tell me what version we are supposed to be playing at the moment? The patch notes say 171.8 is supposed to be the latest at yet my client says 171.4 and all the servers say 171.3.
 

JambiBum

Member
Can someone tell me what version we are supposed to be playing at the moment? The patch notes say 171.8 is supposed to be the latest at yet my client says 171.4 and all the servers say 171.3.

172 now actually. Should probably be out shortly if you don't have it yet.
 

MajorMane

Member
Is the dinosaur pathing/tracking AI just so bad that an Anklyo won't go through a dinosaur gate if it's following a player or is it just that an Anklyo doesn't fit for whatever reason? Didn't have a saddle to test it, but I'm sure if I had rode it through the gate, the Anklyo would have fit.

Otherwise, still having a blast with this game all the damn time. Best dinosaur game I've ever played.
 

JambiBum

Member
Is the dinosaur pathing/tracking AI just so bad that an Anklyo won't go through a dinosaur gate if it's following a player or is it just that an Anklyo doesn't fit for whatever reason? Didn't have a saddle to test it, but I'm sure if I had rode it through the gate, the Anklyo would have fit.

Otherwise, still having a blast with this game all the damn time. Best dinosaur game I've ever played.

Sometimes when you are trying to fit them through tight spaces and you aren't riding them you have to line them up so that they follow you straight through. Their pathing is pretty good but there are definitely times where it doesn't work correctly. Also make sure that your dinos don't go underwater unless you are on them. Found out tonight that they will just let themselves drown if they wander into deep water.
 

DarkKyo

Member
Is this game like early Starbound where each big patch will require having to reset your progress/server back to scratch? Or will they remain unaffected?
 

JambiBum

Member
Is this game like early Starbound where each big patch will require having to reset your progress/server back to scratch? Or will they remain unaffected?

They aren't making us wipe characters/progress at all. They have said that they do not want to force people to lose progress because of updates if they can help it.
 

Xyber

Member
They aren't making us wipe characters/progress at all. They have said that they do not want to force people to lose progress because of updates if they can help it.

While they don't want to do it, you should at least expect it to happen for some reason down the line. Perhaps to fix the stuff where people could make a max level character in local play through console commands and import it to servers. That is something they should fix somehow and I think that it would only be fair to reset levels so everyone starts on equal footing if they do fix it.
 

MajorMane

Member
Sometimes when you are trying to fit them through tight spaces and you aren't riding them you have to line them up so that they follow you straight through. Their pathing is pretty good but there are definitely times where it doesn't work correctly. Also make sure that your dinos don't go underwater unless you are on them. Found out tonight that they will just let themselves drown if they wander into deep water.

Hmm, it's possible that it's the placement of the door then. I tried multiple times to get her through but it just wouldn't work. She'd start charging towards the door, straight as can be, and then hit the frame and just completely stop. She's not the first dino to seem to have this problem though, so it's possible it's something wrong with the placement of the door.
 

Sarcasm

Member
Dunno if I should buy now or after sale.

Also I think my system prob get what..15FPS? I7 3770K (prob should OC to 4) and a GTX670.
 

kcxiv

Member
Dunno if I should buy now or after sale.

Also I think my system prob get what..15FPS? I7 3770K (prob should OC to 4) and a GTX670.

i have a 8350 and a 970 and im getting 15-20 and at times it gets to about 10 and i always get some stupid lock up where it freezes for like 5 seconds.
 

komplanen

Member
Today I feel like I made a little progress. Got a small 2x2 house with bed, mortar and pestle, and item box. It's in a decent spot and I feel like this character will finally be "it". I'm only level 12 but I feel, for the first time, that it's just not easier to restart from scratch on some other server if I get fucked by a dino or player.

Performance-wise I've noticed that running everything at the absolute lowest gives me roughly the same 30FPS as running things on medium-high. If this 30FPS was made into a solid 60FPS I'd be happy.

4690k, gtx970
 

Klyka

Banned
i have a 8350 and a 970 and im getting 15-20 and at times it gets to about 10 and i always get some stupid lock up where it freezes for like 5 seconds.

I'm running an I5 @4.6ghz with a 970.

I got both shadow settings on low, textures epic, AA and PP epic, the rest high. motion blur off (always turn it off,hate it in every game) and everything except SSAO off (game looks too barren without the SSAO shadows.

I got the resolution scale,which is the biggest performance boost you can get, set to the left side of the "graphic quality" drop down menu. So basically directly under the "C" of "Custom".

this is with a resolution of 1080p

I get 30-48 fps in the game and apart from the res scale blurriness, game looks fantastic.
 
So let me get this straight. An Unfinished, Early Access game about waking up naked on an island and punching enough trees to be able to ride dinosaurs, is currently selling more copies on Steam than GTA V.


Fuck it. Bought.
 

Klyka

Banned
So let me get this straight. An Unfinished, Early Access game about waking up naked on an island and punching enough trees to be able to ride dinosaurs, is currently selling more copies on Steam than GTA V.


Fuck it. Bought.

Game is,honestly, from what I played with a friend, very fun.
And the content seems to be there, compared to other EA survival games.
 

Ilmyr

Member
I got a refund for this game. First time i ever used the refund system. :(
The performance is extremely bad right now (GTX 970 and i7 4790 4,4Ghz -> 10-20 FPS).
Played with friends for ~1 hour and basically the performance spoiled all the fun. The trailer implicates smooth good graphics and i can't see any technical solutions to achieve that.

Maybe at a later point i might give this game another try.
 
I got a refund for this game. First time i ever used the refund system. :(
The performance is extremely bad right now (GTX 970 and i7 4790 4,4Ghz -> 10-20 FPS).
Played with friends for ~1 hour and basically the performance spoiled all the fun. The trailer implicates smooth good graphics and i can't see any technical solutions to achieve that.

Maybe at a later point i might give this game another try.

Same but I have a 650 TI boost. Unreal 4 engine looks absolutely abysmal on low settings(same with UT). Game looks fantastic on a good rig and seems to have a ton of content. Really hurt to get the refund but I had to run it ugly as hell and still dipped to 15 fps often.
 

Klyka

Banned
I got a refund for this game. First time i ever used the refund system. :(
The performance is extremely bad right now (GTX 970 and i7 4790 4,4Ghz -> 10-20 FPS).
Played with friends for ~1 hour and basically the performance spoiled all the fun. The trailer implicates smooth good graphics and i can't see any technical solutions to achieve that.

Maybe at a later point i might give this game another try.

Got the same GPU and posted my settings above. Just turn resolution scale down a little bit by bit and you can easily play the game at 30-45 FPS.
I've been playing like that for days and it's a totaly normal game experience
 
Maybe one day people will understand what early access games are for. Maybe.


I doubt it though.

I have 400 hours in Rust, 300 in H1Z1 and know what early access means but the game is much more demanding than I thought it would be and I knew it wasn't till I got a new videocard that I would be able to play it. I don't blame the developer I'm well aware that optimization is coming.
 

JambiBum

Member
I have 400 hours in Rust, 300 in H1Z1 and know what early access means but the game is much more demanding than I thought it would be and I knew it wasn't till I got a new videocard that I would be able to play it. I don't blame the developer I'm well aware that optimization is coming.

That's fair then. Most of the time people just complain that EA games aren't finished and expect them to work flawlessly and it gets old.
 

Xyber

Member
I got a refund for this game. First time i ever used the refund system. :(
The performance is extremely bad right now (GTX 970 and i7 4790 4,4Ghz -> 10-20 FPS).
Played with friends for ~1 hour and basically the performance spoiled all the fun. The trailer implicates smooth good graphics and i can't see any technical solutions to achieve that.

Maybe at a later point i might give this game another try.

With some tweaking you would've been able to get 45+ almost everywhere. Sure, you would have to deal with the lowest setting for everything but textures but that still looks okay.

If you were expecting to run all max out (the only way I ever go down to ~15fps on my 970), then I can see why you think it's extremely bad. But people on worse hardware then you can still get playable framerates.

And the trailer dropped below 30 plenty of times, but I guess that's not obvious to everyone.
 

Klyka

Banned
With some tweaking you would've been able to get 45+ almost everywhere. Sure, you would have to deal with the lowest setting for everything but textures but that still looks okay.

If you were expecting to run all max out (the only way I ever go down to ~15fps on my 970), then I can see why you think it's extremely bad. But people on worse hardware then you can still get playable framerates.

And the trailer dropped below 30 plenty of times, but I guess that's not obvious to everyone.

You can easily get 30-45 frames everywhere with only shadows set to low on a 970
It's all about the resolution scale. If you don't mind some blurriness, the game is perfectly playable.
 
bgweaaW.jpg


I love how dark this game gets! The only reason there's even a tiny bit of light in that screen is because I'm looking at the moon. In the forests without a torch is like my TV is turned off.

Such a shame others can't play along and have to use gamma settings at night.
 

Klyka

Banned
bgweaaW.jpg


I love how dark this game gets! The only reason there's even a tiny bit of light in that screen is because I'm looking at the moon. In the forests without a torch is like my TV is turned off.

Such a shame others can't play along and have to use gamma settings at night.

I had hoped the game didn't have the gamma trickery :(

ah well,I am alread yhappy you can't fully turn off gras :D
 

MajorMane

Member
:O

That would be great!

From a quick Google search, seems it's still gone. I feel bad for the people that used it at night time simply because their computers weren't up to snuff to properly be able to see (and it gets dark in this game for sure), but it was an exploit that people were using to get an unfair advantage over others in terms of PvP, so it had to go at some point. Hopefully Friday's big update offers a lot in terms of optimization out to help everyone.

I don't have it in me to play with resolution scaling turned down, anything but native resolution looks fucking awful.

I have put the game on hold until I can get 60fps everywhere with everything on low and not use the no sky mode. That will probably take some time, but I don't really mind waiting.

Hopefully this happens with Friday's update! I feel like they've not put in as many updates lately in order to make the Friday update as big as possible including new optimization.
 

Xyber

Member
You can easily get 30-45 frames everywhere with only shadows set to low on a 970
It's all about the resolution scale. If you don't mind some blurriness, the game is perfectly playable.

I don't have it in me to play with resolution scaling turned down, anything but native resolution looks fucking awful.

I have put the game on hold until I can get 60fps everywhere with everything on low and not use the no sky mode. That will probably take some time, but I don't really mind waiting.
 

MajorMane

Member
Alright, after watching Jurassic World, my dinosaur hype has definitely kicked into overdrive and I cannot wait for the update to hit tomorrow.
 
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